World War II
(Post Dec. 1941) * (Post Sept. 1939) ** (Post Jan. 1940) * * (Post June 1941) *France (Sept 1939 - June 1940) *Republic of China|side2 = Axis * * (Sept. 1939 - June 1940) *Kingdom of Ausonia ** * |commanders1 = *Franklin D. Roosevelt † *Winston Churchill *Josef Stalin|commanders2 = *Adolf Hitler † *Benito Mussolini † * Hirohito|casualties1 = High|casualties2 = High|image = Wwii.png|subevents = *Pearl Harbor *The Blitz *D-Day *Operation Cherry Blossoms at Night *Battle of Midway|aka = The Second World War|strength1 = United States *B-17 Flying Fortress bomber *B-30 MeteroFortress bomber *RM4 Sherman tank *Rm-enhanced nuclear weaponry|strength2 = Nazi Germany * Valkyrie magitek bomber *Messerschmidt Rm-262 *Bismarck-class battleship Imperial Japan *Mitsubishi A6RM Zero *Yamato-class battleship}} World War II, WWII or WW2, also known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved almost all of the world's countries, especially the great powers, and polarized the globe into two major military alliances that opposed each other: The Allies and the Axis. It was the most widespread war in history, and involved over 100 million people from over 30 nations. It was one of the few wars in history where all the known races entered a state of total war: a state where civilian and military assets became one and the same as nations across the world mobilized all of their resources to fight in exhaustive and devastating military campaigns. Red Matter for the first time became integral to research and development teams across all nations that had access to the exotic material in a desperate bid to create weapons and to deploy large numbers of magically-gifted individuals to use them. It was during this war that one of the worst genocides humanity ever experienced, the Holocaust, occurred. The Soviet Union, despite having been a member of the Allied powers, was perceived as an untrustworthy threat to Western interests, and the alliance soon entered a period of tension where an arms race, both nuclear and Red Matter based, ushered in the Cold War. Background While no historical event has one sole cause, it is safe to say that had the Treaty of Versailles never existed neither would have World War II. It is impossible to overestimate the amount of anger, resentment, and suffering inflicted on Germany through the "War Guilt clause," and thus similarly difficult to overestimate how much it contributed to the later war. Despots and dictators tend to come to power when the people are demoralized and angry, looking for a scapegoat and hope. An Austrian named Adolf Hitler offered Germany both in its darkest hour, and the world once again plummeted towards war. History World War II was, at its core, two almost completely unrelated wars. There was war in Europe and Africa, spearheaded by Nazi Germany and fueled by hatred and pain from the first war and a desire for territorial expansion, The Pacific war theater fought for control for Asia and the Pacific, fed by Japanese resentment of Western colonialism and a desire to establish themselves as a true power. The ancient Kingdom of Ausonia, a theocratic and highly xenophobic and aggressive country, once an empire in its heyday, joined the Axis seeking to regain its former glory and to expand, at the same time asserting dominance over non-Humans. Their elite military, the Knights Illuminor, was ordered to pledge themselves to the cause of Human supremacy and to conquer for their country. At this, the Knights split into two factions, one that wished to ally with Nazi Germany and reignite the flames of glory of the crusading era, and the other that was horrified at the prospect of genocide. Members of the second faction led many Knights on a mass exodus to the United Kingdom, where they established Azoria Keep in Scotland and joined the Allies instead to stop their wayward brothers and sisters. The two wars were fought almost entirely separately on the side of the Axis, as neither Germany or Japan showed interest in coordinating their forces or sharing supplies, and may have been unable to do so in any event due to their distance from each other. Unfortunately for the Axis, their campaigns for expansion were ineffective; the Kingdom of Auusonia would attempt invasions to expand Axis territory, said invasions often poorly planned or equipped and often turning into tactical disasters, forcing Germany to divert resources in order to stabilize the situation. Imperial Japan on the other hand expanded rapidly through Asia and the Pacific, conquering Southeast Asia, Indochina and devastating and occupying the eastern coast of China. Their expansion is owed to their highly productive war machine, the warrior culture instilled in their populace, and the Red Matter technologies that had given them a cutting edge in warfare thanks to the direction of Hirohito, who was a practicing technomancer and revered as a deity. Japanese magical technology gained the Empire a decisive advantage in the early stages of the war, dispensing great misery on its conquered territories. Germany and the Axis Powers invaded Eastern and Northern states such as Norway and the Dwarven kingdoms during their conquest of Europe with the intention to secure deposits of Rm, due to fears that the Allies would begin to amass their own stockpiles. This fear was justified when the United States, with the heavily Rm-saturated Canada at its side, entered the war in 1941 after Imperial Japan, in overconfidence, made the mistake of attempting to cripple the US and prevent them from interfering by attacking Pearl Harbor. This only gave the United States the onus to enter the war, with December 7th, 1941 marking the start of the Platinum Age of Magic as the United States' war machine began to spin up, which would ultimately usher in a new era of magic as world powers raced to advance magitek superiority. During the war, the US experimented with Red Matter enhanced technology, conducting magitek research at classified military installations in the Rocky Mountains and around Union City. Area 51 was created to intentionally spread rumors that it was related to Rm-technology development in order to draw the Empire of Japan's attention away from the real facilities in the very real possibility of an invasion. The Soviet Union likewise experimented with Rm, including considering the creation of a subspecies of Anthro-feralis, based on bears, which was to be used as stopgap shock troops against Nazi Germany. This was a controversial notion as it was clearly in violation of the Flesh Taboo, and enough dissent and outcry against it saw the program being cancelled, but later on revived and implemented after the Axis betrayed them and attempted an invasion of the Soviet homeland. Ekhota Base was built during the war by Dwarven engineers and functioned primarily as an armament and vehicle storage depot, later refitted to become a training facility. Decades later it would later see another refit for the Cold War. Samuel Lang participated in the war as a B-30 bomber pilot, flying nearly seventy-five combat missions during his tour of duty over the skies of Europe, conducting bombing raids over both Ausonia and Germany, as well as occupied countries taken over by the Axis. His bomber, a blended flying wing powered by pusher-props, was known as the Shrieking Siren. Near the end stages of the war, Operation Cherry Blossoms At Night was a Japanese operation to sabotage the US industrial base by releasing a biological attack on its western seaboard in order to slow the American advance to buy more time for Japanese forces to replenish and counterattack. The deployment of the pathogen proved extremely effective, but the resultant heavy civilian casualties outraged the Americans and their allies, and contributed to their decision to deploy three nuclear warheads on the Japanese mainland months later, two of which were magically-enhanced. The bombing of Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Toyko ultimately forced Japan to sign an agreement of unconventional surrender, ending the war in 1945. Aftermath Dwarven kingdoms in Eastern Europe, invaded by first Nazi Germany and then the Soviet Union, developed a great distrust against Human factions and alliances, and fought strongly to expel the foreigners from their territories. Most Dwarven states succeeded and became independent once more, highly wary of the Human powers surrounding them. A few however failed to free themselves from occupation by the Soviet Union, which quickly took to studying their manufacturing practices, technology and culture in an attempt to replicate Dwarven engineering prowess so that it could be used to gain an advantage over western powers. Dwarf states were hesitant to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization or the Warsaw Pact, and as a result they became independent, highly defensive and paranoid buffer states between West and East. Several were preparing, however, to eventually seek membership in the European Union and NATO in 1985, months before the Awakening Incident began and made trival any political or territorial ambitions they or anyone else had. The Kingdom of Ausonia, their Knights disgraced and on the losing side of the war, renamed itself to the Republic of Ausonia in order to disassociate itself with the Axis and their imperialistic past, wishing to reform and reappear to the international community as a stable and free democracy. The Knights Illuminor themselves would forever be split by a schism, a crack in the Mantle that could never be repaired, between the Knights that sided with the Nazis and those who fought them. The end of the World War and rising political tensions, as well as the demonstrated capabilities of Rm led into a state of tension between the Soviet Union and the rest of the Allied powers. In the decades after the war, the United States, along with the United Kingdom and most other powers, immediately scrambled to secure more Rm deposits in anticipation for what could potentially be an even greater magi-tec war. Though the United States already had its northern neighbor of Canada as a potential source of the magical strategic material, further expeditions to Antarctica were launched in earnest with the objective of surveying the icy plains for potential deposits of Rm. Legacy Though the Allies were victorious, many considered victory pyrrhic. The Second World War was one of the most devastating conflicts ever fought, with civilian and military casualties nearing almost a hundred million. Its devastating effects ravaged thousands of communities across the world and destabilized global affairs for decades to come. This severe disruption led to vows that such destruction was to be avoided at all costs in the future, resulting in increased international cooperation in forms such as the United Nations, which sought to resolve disputes with voices in a debate chamber instead of guns on a battlefield. In its closure, the war brought a weapon capable of not only outright obliteration of enemy states, but the capability of annihilating life on Earth. A scramble for both nuclear weapons and reaching space to deploy them ensued in the following years, while political tensions accelerated arms races and weapons development in a tense standoff between the United States and Soviet Union in what would be known as the Cold War. World War II greatly proved the effectiveness and viability of magic on the battlefield. Because magi-tec was used to such great effect, the following wars and military hardware produced in the aftermath of the war made great use of magically-enhanced weaponry, the most famous of which was the ACS-1 Citadel-class aerial battleship. All future military forces would go on to incorporate more magical weaponry into their arsenals, and actively encouraged or drafted wizards into their ranks in a quest to gain the decisive edge over their enemies and rivals. Magi-tek as a whole became immensely popular after the war, with booming industries growing around its proliferation. In addition, technology as a whole accelerated at a vast rate with the aid of the wizarding world, resulting in vast improvements in transportation, construction, infrastructure, medicine, farming, power generation and thousands of other fields during the latter half of the 20th century. Category:Conflicts